Terry Lee Anderson

"In six chapters, Terry Anderson and Laura Huggins make a powerful argument for free market environmentalism. They break down liberal and conservative stereotypes of what it means to be an environmentalist and show that, by forming local coalitions around market principles, stereotypes can be replaced by pragmatic solutions that improve environmental quality without increasing red tape."--BOOK JACKET.

The lifestyle of American Indians before European settlers arrived several centuries ago is often held up today as a model of environmental sensitivity and communitarian cooperation. But is it really true? In this bold book, Terry Anderson debunks much of the romanticism surrounding American Indian culture. American Indians, he argues, developed forms of property rights, contracts, and market exchanges resembling those used by modern Western cultures. Anderson further argues that much of the poverty among Indian tribes living on reservations today is due to U.S. government policies that deprive Indians of their property rights and impose collective decision making on them unnaturally. We do a great disservice to Indians, Anderson concludes, by imposing on them not only our bureaucracy but also a romantic image of Indian life that does not square with the historical record.

The Political Economy Research Center has been at the forefront of debates over public land management for more than a decade. Under the banner of free market environmentalism, PERC scholars have advocated more reliance on market processes to allocate amenities and commodities on the federal estate. This volume examines the prospects for reducing conflicts over public land management by substituting markets for bureaucracies. The chapters deal with recreation, timber, grazing, mining, and oil, and gas development. In each case, a list of feasible and effective policy recommendations is presented. The conclusion is that a healthy dose of free market environmentalism is the best way to eliminate the "multiple conflicts over multiple uses," to reduce the drain on the federal treasury and to promote cooperation.

In the American West, trappers, miners, and farmers often preceded the formal institutions of government and therefore had to invent their own institutional framework. Early historians like Frederick Jackson Turner and Walter Prescott Webb found heroes in this romantic frontier. Modern historians, however, are challenging the traditional histories, arguing that the history of the West is one of natural resource waste, minority exploitation, and political manipulation by a powerful elite. This book challenges many conclusions from both schools in a framework that considers western history as an episode in the evolution of property rights. The authors in this volume provide a new way of thinking about the West that relies neither on heroes nor villains but argues that economics and politics shaped the institutional environment of the American West

"In Political Environmentalism, Terry Anderson and his contributors show how environmental special interests have indeed provided the high moral ground for economic special interests who stand to gain from legislation that hampers competition. The book documents a range of examples of how politics and environmentalism mix to produce strange bedfellows and perverse results. It shows, for instance, how clean air and water legislation based on technology standards actually results in dirtier air and higher costs to consumers. It tells how wilderness designations and Superfund sites are usually determined more by economic interests than by any other factor. And it reveals how the Endangered Species Act puts property rights up for grabs in the political arena - doing little to save species but consuming considerable resources in the process.". "Throughout the book, Political Environmentalism boldly confronts specific environmental laws, asking whether they were motivated by environmental concerns. whether they achieve their goals, whether they are cost-effective - and, most important whether they in fact generate perverse results."--BOOK JACKET.

"Mention of the American West usually evokes images of rough and tumble cowboys, ranchers, and outlaws. In contrast, The Not So Wild, Wild West casts America's frontier history in a new framework that emphasizes the creation of institutions, both formal and informal, that facilitated cooperation rather than conflict. Rather than describing the frontier as a place where heroes met villains, this book argues that everyday people helped carve out legal institutions that tamed the West." "The authors emphasize that ownership of resources evolves as those resources become more valuable or as establishing property rights becomes less costly. Rules evolving at the local level will be more effective because local people have a greater stake in the outcome. This theory is brought to life in the colorful history of Indians, fur trappers, buffalo hunters, cattle drovers, homesteaders, and miners. The book concludes with a chapter that takes lessons from the American frontier and applies them to our modern "frontiers" - the environment, developing countries, and space exploration."--BOOK JACKET.